Britney's Piers
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Posts posted by Britney's Piers
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Speaking of Bono, wasn't he building a "Bono Tower" in Ireland, still going ahead?
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Some things can get awfully close. Consider virtualization. Imagine that in the future, we could all own virtual mansions and have our every need satisfied: all by stimulative neurological trickery. We would stil need nutrition, but the energy required to experience a high-energy lifestyle would be relatively minor. This is an example of enabling technology that obviates the need to engage in energy-intensive activities. Want to spend the weekend in Paris? You can do it without getting out of your chair. [More like an IV-drip-equipped toilet than a chair, the physicist thinks.]
Interesting, I thought this would come up. How does the economist know that we are in fact not now living in that solution, solved by an earlier race facing the same economic problem, there's no guarantee that it would satisfy every need though, as pointed out in the matrix.
Agent Smith: Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.
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It makes you think; how the hell is unemployment ever going to go down? What implications is this going to have for a modern society? What are people going to do in their spare time? What will the effect on mental health be?
Well most people have 2 days of spare time each week and they spend it...shopping, watching television and getting drunk. Extrapolating, 5 days of spare time in a "leisure society" would presumably involve 5 days of shopping, watching television and drinking.
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It isn't selfless to look after children - they are as much a part of you as your leg. It's extended selfishness - and as natural and normal as unextended selfishness.
Absolutely. Having children is selfish, or is it the gene being selfish.
Maybe in the lala land of the rich west having children is a fulfilling spiritual experience, but for most of humanity it means having multiple children where the ones who don't die off before they are out of the cradle are sent out to paw through a rubbish tip for fallen grains of rice to sell at the market for pennies.
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Couldn't agree more.
My parents and their friends are quite high up in the affluent scale. Not the kind of obscene wealth that can be claimed from today's corporate world at the top but old money, good life no excesses. All of them are in their seventies now and they are dropping like flys. They've had the best food, health care and support money can buy and mother nature is still telling them enoughs enough and their times up. Further down the chain people have been pulled out of abject poverty and that is what had been killing them. The averaging up has come from the bottom and not the top and it is clear to see they are quickly finding there place in the gutter/early grave.
The length of our days is seventy years--or eighty, if we have the strength
Psalm 90:10
Life expectancy, United Kingdom
www.google.co.uk/publicdata
80.1 years
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What happened to the next generation dying before their parents because of smoking / binge drinking / obesity ? Apparently we are living both longer and shorter lives.
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I hope you mean being fat and not just fat itself. I ******ing love fat. In fact off to cook a steak soon and i am gonna gnash down all that chewy fat coz it tastes immense.
Yes, being fat.
I've never had any problems with salt. I use a lot of salt on everything and have never had blood pressure problems, if anything its on the lower side, often around 100/60. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole salt thing turned out to be a hoax in the same way as fat-makes-you-fat and eggs-raise-cholesterol turned out to be wrong.
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well yes but fails to address why they eat too much?
Its because they are programmed to do it.
Don't know if anyone caught "Big Body Squad" on C5 last night. Truly appalling. Six trained people to get a seriously obese person out of their flat to hospital for a routine visit, plus two people round earlier for the initial risk assessment.
The State is pouring resources into these people, but someone has to clean up the mess. Why are these people destroying themselves? It can't all be to get a free flat, play on x-box all day or have pretty nurses round everyday, to clean and toilet you. Hmm..
Fat should be made more socially unacceptable, on par with smoking. In Japan overweight and obesity is viewed as a sickness, you are at risk of losing your job as you are seen as "ill", and there are no easy benefits to fall back on after losing a job so this is taken seriously. Some Japanese companies have waist measure checks and anyone above is put on a diet if they want to continue employment there.
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Don't delude yourself. There's loads of sugar and fat, and the flavourings.. In the bun, see that's gotta be a DAMN load of sugar there. Then there's
"(Mono- and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids" mmm.
don't forget the 51+9% cheese in the cheese: a whole 60% of it is cheese!
Or, the Natural Cheese Flavouring, whatever the hell that is.
Don't forget the 44% of your RDA of SALT in one Quarterpounder with Cheese. Fries anyone? That's another 18% of your salt RDA. If you believe the figures. You'll know the employees just pour salt on. Wonder if they sample randomly for the nutrition measurements?
I enjoy the occasional McAccident, but I don't kid myself that it's 'healthy'.
When I ate a McDonalds meal my gut felt like I'd drank a pint of PVA glue. I wouldn't eat it even if they were giving it away.
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What a load of rubbish. The west can't even 'do an Arab spring' in Syria.
OK, here we go. Like clockwork.
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After ruining the alliance with Pakistan the US/NATO supply lines to Afghanistan go through Russian territory, which Russia threatened to cut off recently. This BBC propaganda might be a warning that they will do an arab spring on Putin unless he keeps the lines open.
SAS teams are probably already there.
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States use violence at their core. Every bit of legislation is a threat of violence. Every bit of taxation is a threat of violence.
Personally, I don't think violence should be at the heart of society, which is why I do think there is something wrong with the state. Violence will always be with us, but it should be the exception, rather than the rule.
Well that's all it comes down to at the end of the day isn't it, you're just saying "let's all get along" which is good, if it ever happens.
Anarchism is quite different, the universe is by default in anarchism all the time. A state is just a group of people using violence within that anarchist construct because no one else has the means to stop them. So the problem of how to deal with a violent person, or group of violent people, in an anarchist world is already at hand.
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Perpetual interest rates of 0.5%
1.5 quadrillion dollars of derivatives
multiple rounds of QE
state bailouts of failing companies
Debt/GDP over 100%
10+ million unemployed or "economically inactive"
All the great benefits of living in our great western, "capitalist", neoclassical economy. Enjoy it while it lasts Rt. Hon. Mr Quango, because it won't much longer.
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Fair play to them. If some idiot offers to pay you $2 million just because you can put on an arrogant attitude, then you might as well take the easy money.
You can get millions for kicking around a piece of leather, shooting a trainee kid in the foot with an airgun, sleeping with a granny, crashing your car, drink driving, avoiding speeding fines and putting your cigarette into someones eye. So why not for gambling?
Hmm and who were the ones who offered it to them, and where were the people watching them, and why were the share holders not doing anything, and why should the shareholders care anyway when they get to cream off huge fees from the funds of OPM no matter what happens to their investments. This is the problem with modern corporate capitalism, there is no one who is ultimately responsible for anything and no where you can stick the knife. If anyone's head does roll they just end up on the board of some other corporate entity.
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I'm gonna point out again for all the sociopaths on here that haven't grasped this yet.
It's not the bankers money.
It's not the banks money.
It's the banks CUSTOMERS money.
It's the banks SAVERS money.
It's peoples savings and pensions. Ordinary people like us.
When you say people should "screw the bank" what your actually saying is they should SCREW ALL THE ORDINARY PEOPLE WHO SAVED RATHER THAN SPENT.
You don't save with a bank (unless you have a safe deposit box), you lend to them, and take a risk of not seeing your money again, that's why you get interest. This reminds me of the "victims" of the Icelandic banks who didn't seem to understand why they were getting such a high return on their "savings".
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The NHS is a fairly unusual healthcare system even among state-funded healthcare systems. France spends even more on healthcare but you do get more of a first-rate service with far better outcomes.
But anyone arguing for a US-style system is a loon. That's just a way for corporations to fleece people while leaving millions without care. A perfectly normal American child WITH access to good healthcare will often get dragged to umpteen 'specialists' for the tiniest little 'potential problems' just to make big money.
Also, people are wise to privatisations now. Buses and trains too expensive to use. Gas and electricity companies fleecing you. Water companies that just crank up bills rather than fix massive leaks to make easy money. Even quite liberal/conservative people admit that natural monopolies and fundamental infrastructure were better off in state hands,
Well the problem is with the practice of medicine itself, not is how it is organized. The vested interest is in keeping people dependent on the system, how the money actually gets from A to B is academic, whether via government or via private insurance it still ends up in the same pockets at the end. I was diagnosed with IBS by a GP, given three ineffectual prescriptive medicines for 6.50 each per month FOR LIFE. Personal research led me to a few simple diet changes plus a calcium+vitamin D supplement, cost to me 0.019 pence per day, problem solved completely. Modern medicine = keeping people just sick enough.
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The comparison to slavery lacks basic sanity. A slave did not get paid anything, and would starve in the absence of useful skills. In comparison, the unemployed enjoy conditions broadly similar those working for the minimum wage. They are free to do as they please if they don't need benefits, such as move to some other country where working is a lifestyle choice.
They did not get paid but the master was obliged to provide the slave housing and food, at least if they wanted to slave to be fit enough for any useful work. Some cultures treated slaves harshly, but in others slavery was quite comfortable, such as a slave for a Roman household. Romans would sometimes fall into slavery if they were unable to pay back debts, or were too poor to pay the state taxes......hmmm
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So tax credit subsidies no longer enough, they want free labour under the guise of 'helping' (themselves). This is actually very chilling - anything but face the realities of a broken economy that can not support its population economically - that would require some radical rethinking of what and economy/society is.
As sure as eggs is eggs, it starts with bashing the unemployed (because of course their unemployment is their fault), and leads to the need to be seen to be doing something. The elite can continue with their snouts in the trough and the likes of A4E can go on rewarding themselves for loading the conveyor belt of false hope.
Yes but when everyone works for Tesco for pennies who is going to be left shopping in Tesco? They will be schooled again in the Henry Ford wisdom of wages, the only question is when and how bad it will get beforehand.
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The 2.0 per cent target remit is now just ceremonial tradition, like the remit of the BBC to be fair and balanced, it obviously has no intention of aiming for it, I believe that much.
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The idea behind working family tax credit is sound - you have kids etc, so you get high tax code emaing you pay less tax i.e. keep more of what you earn.
No money flows from the state to the individual.
So, it's paying two people different amounts to do the same job , because one of them has made a lifestyle choice the other didn't. Doesn't sound very sound.
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The fact that these metrics are used without irony to define deprivation shows how sick British culture has become with materialism/consumerism.
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One of the problems with democracy is that nobody gets what they really want ...
H L Mencken said the opposite was the problem, democracy was about giving the people exactly what they want...and giving it to them good and hard.
Another main problem with democracy is that every man is equal under it, when we know this not to be the case. The opinion of the most intelligent is given equal weight to the stupid, the opinion of the hardest and most efficient workers equal with the laziest.
Given that one believes in a state and its means, surely then the next question is how best to organize that state. A state run democratically seems like the worst of both worlds, an attempt to achieve both the freedom of anarchy and the power of the state, and ending up achieving neither.
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DrBubb has addressed this issue and has come up with the Libran portfolio.
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The thing is, for the system not to be abused like this the country needs to have some sort of morals, if you throw away all morals and tell people "make a buck however you can" then you can't be surprised when people milk it.
Same applies re: Hester's bonus. The state owned bank is offering the money on a plate then the politicians are telling him "we are offering this but please don't take it". How stupid.
Egypt Cuts Natural Gas Supplies To Israel
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Oh dear, Egypt can kiss goodbye to the US bribes aid now.